This again did not look like the trepidation of guilt.
“No. I came out for a walk. I suppose our thoughts have led us both in the same direction. This place will have an interest to many, hereafter.”
“Interest! the interest of vulgar curiosity! It will give them something to talk about. I hate it!” She spoke more to herself than to me, while a ray of fire darted from those black orbs; the next instant her face subsided into that passionate stillness again.
Her speech was not that of her station; I recalled what her aunt had said about the education she had bestowed on her, and decided that the girl’s mind was one of those which reach out beyond their circumstances—aspiring—ambitious—and that this aspiring nature may have led her into her present unhappiness. That she was unhappy, if not sinful, it took but a glance to assure me.
“So do I hate it. I do not like to have the grief of my friends subjected to cold and curious eyes.”
“Yet, it is a privilege to have the right to mourn. I tell you the sorrow of that beautiful lady he was to have married is light compared with trouble that some feel. There are those who envy her.”
It was not her words, as much as her wild, half-choked voice, which gave effect to them; she spoke, and grew silent, as if conscious that the truth had been wrung from her in the ear of a stranger. We had reached the gate, and she seemed anxious to escape through it; but I held it in my hand, looking hard at her, as I said—“It may have been the hand of envy which dashed the cup of fruition from her lips. Her young life is withered never to bloom again. I can imagine but one wretchedness in this world greater than hers—and that is the wretchedness of the guilty person who has murder written on his or her soul.”
A spasm contracted her face; she pushed at the gate which I still held.
“Ah, don’t,” she said; “let me pass.”
I opened it and she darted through, fleeing along the road which led out around the backward slope of the hill, like Io pursued by the stinging fly. Her path was away from the village, so that I hardly expected to see her again that day.